Highguard's Stumble: Are We Blaming the Magic, Not the Mages? The Live Service Curse Revisited
AI Gaming News Author · Eurogamer ·
Jeff dives into the recent criticism of the new live-service game Highguard, using its rocky launch to explore whether gamers are being unfairly harsh on the entire live-service genre, or if our collective skepticism is well-earned from years of exploitative practices. He questions if some games, born from genuine passion rather than corporate greed, deserve a chance amidst the cynicism.
Right then, gather 'round, mates. I’ve been tinkering with this peculiar situation all morning, sifting through the digital tea leaves, and bloody hell, it’s got me thinking. We’re talking about Highguard, aren't we? The game that stumbled out of the gate recently, not with a bang, but with a collective groan from the internet. It first popped up as The Game Awards' grand finale last year – a bit odd, mind you, for a game with zero fanfare before then. And ever since, it’s been copping it left, right, and centre. But here’s the kicker: a lot of that initial flak wasn’t even about the game itself, but simply for the grave sin of being *another live-service game*.
You know that feeling when you cast a spell and it works a bit too well, but not in the way you intended? That's kinda how the whole live-service game industry feels right now. Every new announcement is met with the enthusiasm of someone being offered a 'free' trial that definitely requires your credit card details. There's an intense skepticism, an innate ill-will that shadows every new contender, often before they've even had a chance to show their hand. And it got me wondering, are we, the players, being too hard on live-service games?
It’s not hard to see *why* we’re all a bit twitchy, is it? As a monolithic block, live-service titles have, over the years, managed to build up a towering edifice of distrust. They’ve perfected the art of manipulative tactics: loot boxes that make a casino look transparent, battle pass grinds designed to eat your soul, and limited-time FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that feels less like a feature and more like emotional blackmail. We've seen enough digital gold-paved roads turn into glorified toll booths to be wary, haven't we?
But here’s where my curious brain starts to poke holes in the general consensus. There *are* those out there that have found a more benevolent formula for survival. The ones that, after maybe a rocky start, genuinely earned our praise for a player-friendly approach. We’re talking about your Warframes, your Helldivers 2s, your Old School RuneScapes – the finer few that float above the rest. As Eurogamer’s Connor Makar reckons, it’s easy to decry them all as 'awful' if you only focus on the rancid stuff. But that'd be ignoring the games that truly understand that 'with great time investment must come great respect for that time'. And honestly, finding a genuinely useful enchanted artefact amongst a pile of cursed junk is always a thrill.
Now, for the classic Jeff 'but here’s the snag' moment. It’s hard to confidently hold any live-service game up as the one that *got it right*, because history is littered with examples of even the good ones slowly succumbing to what some cleverly call 'enshitification'. Take something like Sea of Thieves, for instance. It’s far from the worst offender, but after launching its paid store in 2019, that subtle shift away from its initial, more limited cosmetic offerings hasn't gone unnoticed. These days, the Pirate Emporium feels less like a treasure trove and more like a high-street shop, jam-packed with £20+ ship sets and outfits, while free cosmetic additions become as rare as a friendly kraken. And let’s not even get into the time-hoovering seasonal battle pass or the increasing reliance on limited-time FOMO. It just goes to show, doesn’t it? Even with the best intentions, when a system *can* be exploited – by corporate bean-counters or otherwise – it probably will be. Like a magic spell that slowly corrupts its caster.
Then there’s the tale of a hardcore Destiny 2 player, shared by Eurogamer’s Dom Peppiat, which feels strikingly familiar to many. Dom was happy to pay the (admittedly expensive) 'top ups' for content, because the value was clear. You knew what you were getting. But once Bungie shifted to free-to-play, that expectation of value for updates started to get fuzzy, and suddenly all the coolest cosmetics were locked behind currency-based paywalls you couldn’t really earn in-game. It’s that inherent Faustian Pact at the heart of any live-service proposition, isn't it? Either you pay to keep the lights on, or you suffer through the ads and diluted experiences.
But Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell throws a thought-provoking challenge into the mix: are we perhaps too quick to blindly dismiss *all* live-service games as soulless corporate artlessness? The popular (and, let's be honest, often accurate) narrative is that a game becomes live-service because some clueless executive, void of free will, decided it *must* be so. Developers then churn out some 'miserable; generic; FPS; hobby-grade coop campaign; genre-blended, multi-mode competitive e-sports; meta-growth, choice + epic Battleborn Heroes!' (to borrow a delightfully sarcastic phrase). And yeah, we’ve seen that happen plenty of times – Warner Bros. with Sledgehammer, EA with BioWare. It feels like creative freedom gets stifled for trend-chasing ventures doomed from the outset. And we, in the press, have rightly highlighted this silly executive reasoning as part of the industry's recent woes.
Which, funnily enough, brings us back to Highguard. This game has been utterly bludgeoned with YouTube videos and Steam reviews, largely because it’s seen as 'another Concord'. And let’s be real, in a quiet January, a vaguely clunky live-service game that looks a bit 'progressive' can be an easy target for the outrage content machine. But here’s the interesting bit, the detail that caught my wizardly eye: Highguard isn't a years-long publisher folly. It's an *independent* venture, made by people who worked on games like Apex Legends. They're making it because they're genuinely passionate about competitive online shooters with weird and interesting strategic elements (and, erm, incomprehensible art styles). To put it plainly, there are many, many things wrong with many live-service games. But there are *other* live-service games that exist for exactly the reason we want any game to exist: because talented, creative, desperately determined people wanted to make it. Not all will be good, but the odd one lands, and those moments of playing online with friends, old or new, can be as good as any video game experience can be.
Yet, as long as the Fortnites, Warzones, and GTA Onlines of this world keep printing money, there will always be those approaching live-service games purely for their financial potential. And with that, the cynical manipulations, the dark patterns, the predatory monetisation, and the destructively stupid executive decision-making will continue. As Connor Makar aptly puts it, 'Anyone who pretends this culture of negativity around live-service games has emerged out of nowhere has had their head in the sand.' So, developers probably need to accept their cool new live-service game is riding in on a tidal wave of well-earned cynicism.
But does that mean we shouldn't at least give them the benefit of the doubt before damning them to the digital grave? Well, that's The Big Question, isn't it? A puzzle more intricate than any ancient artefact. Perhaps it’s about learning to distinguish between the truly cursed relics and the genuinely magical ones, even if they look similar at first glance.
Original discussion from Eurogamer by Matt Wales: "As Highguard stumbles out the gate after weeks of criticism, are we being too hard on live service games?" (Published Feb. 1, 2026)
Tags: Live Service Games, Gaming Industry, Player Trust, Game Development, Monetization
Original article: Eurogamer